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Sunday, April 15, 2012

Mistweaver Feedback

Valen posted some awesome feedback on the beta forums for mistweavers describing much of the feel and flow of healing as a monk. There were 2 blue posts that came from that and I just wanted to relay what's going on with the mistweaver monk spec.Seen here (http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/4363776520) player Valen describes an adventure through the Temple of the Jade Serpent as a healing monk. She says that it feels pretty good except the interaction of the statues and the damage being so low it was kind of disappointing. The other issue brought up is about mana regen which as the blues say below is something they're still tinkering with.

From Ghostcrawler we have:

Mana regeneration and healing throughput is something that is still being tuned, so that will feel a bit off for a while longer.

We
had to tone down Mistweaver DPS. In our raid tests, they were
contributing too much damage while still being effective healers.

Chi
Wave is something we're still tuning. The cooldown is now around 8
seconds, which may be too short. At the moment it accounts for half of
the healing in raid situations.

Jab and other DPS abilities
scale with your weapon, and also with AP. The damage is normalized in
such a way that any weapon choice is equal to the other, so weapons are
an aesthetic choice. We'll probably have the DPS abilities scale with
SP, as long as they're balanced.

We've changed Mistweavers to also have a 1 second GCD as with the other two specializations.

Can
you explain more about the problem with a longer Soothing Mists? The
mana per second is the same whether it's a short or long channel. Do you
feel compelled to complete the channel? Clipping it should not incur a
mana penalty.

Cherry Mana Tea is intended to be "sipped"
during break periods. Good Mistweavers will end a fight with as low mana
as possible and as low Cherry Mana Tea stacks as possible. There are
periods where you can't afford any breaks, but those vary by encounter.
It should no longer break on taking damage. Stacks is something we are
still iterating upon.

We've changed Jasmine Tea to an
upfront mana cost that will generate Chi over time (think "Chi Tap").
We're still iterating a lot on this design though. The intent is that
the Mistweaver has an edge on precision healing, while the Windwalker
has less control but can gain Chi quickly.

Expel Harm only
does damage if you "effectively" healed. If it's all overheal, no damage
will happen. We intend for all monks to use the ability. Windwalkers
can heal themselves.

And just today Kaivax added more to it:

We're thinking that Jab and Expel Harm saw a bit too much increase to mana last patch, and we’re going to reduce them somewhat.

We’ve
increased the mana gain from Cherry Mana Tea. This spell will change
whenever we tune mana and healing numbers, which has been happening a
lot lately.

We've changed the number of serpent statues you
can have out at once from 2 to 1. However, while in Stance of the Wise
Serpent, you now have Eminence on yourself, causing half of your damage
to be healing to nearby targets. This will allow “melee healing” monks
to heal through dealing damage without having their statue down. The
statue is intended to be more of a “cooldown” you use on tough fights,
not similar to a totem you plop down.

We’re going to try
having Renewing Mists also generate Chi (along with Surging Mist and
Soothing Mists) when you cast it. The bug with Renewing Mists not
showing up on raid/party frames should also be fixed in an upcoming
build.

We’re getting rid of Jasmine Force Tea because we
felt it was confusing to convert Mana to Chi, then Chi back to Mana with
Cherry Mana Tea.

We’re going to make Surging Mist require a
target rather than being a cast-time smart heal. The reason why it was
originally a smart heal without requiring a target was to let you build
up a stack of Vital Mists by using Jab, then cast an instant Surging
Mist without having to change your target. We think the right place for
the original Surging Mist smart heal is via a glyph.

One
issue we’re concerned with is Surging Mist and Renewing Mists generating
Chi, making it harder for you to burn down your Chi. We’re likely going
to add another high Chi ability, and/or adjust talents so you can have
some choice.

We like how Chi Wave bounces from friends and
enemies, because the whole theme of the monk healer is weaving damage
and healing together. If Chi Wave was a pure heal, it would break away
from that theme.With regard to feedback on these subjects, what
we're really looking for is playing as a DPS healer (as opposed to the
traditional "pure healing" playstyle), or perhaps a mix of the two. We
want both the traditional and dps-to-heal to be viable and fun.

This certainly changes the way the statue will be used, it won't be a requirement anymore. Though with all the additional spells that will generate Chi perhaps it will end up a style choice like Disc with or without atonement. You can be a healing monk that just uses all heals to generate Chi, or you can use Jab to do it too and also get some healing out of the dps and that's what Kaivax's last paragraph touches on. Jasmine Force Tea going away will make a difference as well. Other than through talent there won't be a way to emergency generate Chi. In all regards they're putting a lot of work into making things just right and that really gets me excited to see what happens next.